Sweden voted on Sunday, and by Monday morning the count had produced arithmetic about as narrow as the Riksdag can produce. At 11:41, with 6,277 of 6,626 electoral districts reported, the Election Authority’s preliminary figures gave the Social Democrats 28.1 per cent and 100 seats, the Moderates 19.9 per cent and 70, the Sweden Democrats 17.6 per cent and 62, the Left Party 8.2 per cent and 29, the Centre Party 7.1 per cent and 25, the Christian Democrats 6.2 per cent and 22, the Greens 6.1 per cent and 22, and the Liberals 5.4 per cent and 19. Turnout was 80.3 per cent — 6,350,599 valid votes from 8,051,259 eligible voters.
Add those seats in the groupings Swedish politics has used since 2022 and the chamber divides 176 to 173. The Social Democrats, Left, Centre and Greens together reach 176 of 349; the Moderates, Sweden Democrats, Christian Democrats and Liberals reach 173. Against 2022 the largest movements are downward: the Sweden Democrats fall 3.0 points and eleven seats, and the Social Democrats 2.3 points and seven seats, while the other six parties each rise between 0.3 and 1.5 points.
None of this is final, and the Election Authority is careful about the distinction. Three hundred and forty-nine districts had yet to report — as it happens, the number of seats in the chamber. The authority said on Sunday that the definitive count — carried out by the county administrative boards, with late-arriving and advance votes added, every party’s votes recorded separately and personal votes tallied — begins on Monday 14 September. The public broadcaster SVT’s election-day exit poll had put the four opposition parties at 51.3 per cent and the four governing parties at 46.8; Euronews, reporting it, noted that Swedish exit polls have not always proved accurate.
Three seats is a slender thing on which to rest a parliament, and Sweden will not know for some days whether it has them.